Special Needs Planning

A special needs trust can be an extremely valuable estate planning tool. Designed to provide a person with special needs funds to help ensure a certain quality of life is enjoyed without jeopardizing eligibility for need based government benefits, a special needs trust can cover a wide range of expenses on behalf of the beneficiary with special needs. What exactly can the proceeds of a special needs trust be used for? We will take a look at that here.

The unique care needs of a child with special needs can run a wide range. Some children with special needs will be able to live independently. Others may need or eventually need 24-7 care. Oftentimes, a child with special needs will fall somewhere in between, needing assistance on occasion, but not all the time. No matter what type of care your child with special needs may have or eventually have, there are plans that can be put in place to help ensure they maintain quality of life far into the future.
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Do you have a loved one with special needs? If so, he or she may be receiving needs-based government benefits such as Medicaid or Social Security to help cover essential and basic costs. While these government benefits can act as a critical financial resource for many, they do not cover much more than the basics. As such, you may want to provide financial support for your loved one with special needs. This, however, can be tricky considering you do not want your financial report to jeopardize your loved one’s continued receipt of those need-based government benefits. Here is where a Read more . . .

You may have heard the term “special needs” in a variety of contexts. You may have even heard of special needs in the estate planning context. This is because there are several critical aspects of estate planning that should be addressed when planning for a person or a loved one with special needs.

If you have a loved one with special needs, you already know that the benefits they receive from the government are both amazing and completely inadequate. Your loved one would not have the quality of life they currently enjoy without receiving government benefits, but the benefits only provide for very basic needs.

You likely supplement the government benefits, but understand there are rules you must follow in order to preserve your loved one’s eligibility. The need to carefully manage your loved one’s benefits and care while providing them with the highest quality of life possible will not end when you pass away. Therefore it is important to do what you can now to plan ahead for the time when you will no longer be there.

Earlier this month, the highest court in the land, the United States Supreme Court, heard oral arguments in a case about an issue near and dear to our heart: education for people with special needs. Thanks to this case, we may finally get an answer to the question of how much effort and funding public schools should put toward educating a student with special needs.

The case before the Court comes from Colorado, and it concerns a young man diagnosed with autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, who made little progress in public school, but was able to make significant gains after switching to a private school. The family is seeking reimbursement for the cost of sending their son to private school (he is now 17), but the local public school balked at the suggestion that the education they provided was inadequate.

The Court will decide “whether public schools owe disabled children ‘some’ educational benefit — which courts have determined to mean just-above-trivial progress — or whether students legally deserve something more: a substantial, ‘meaningful’ benefit.

If you care for someone with special needs, you know your loved one is someone special. It should come as no surprise that a loved one who needs special attention and care from you during your lifetime also requires a different treatment than others included in your estate plan.

Leaving money to someone who has a disability is a wonderful thing to do, but if not done properly, it can end up making them worse off.
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